A little Oak we took down this weekend

[blunt]

Standing out in the middle of a field stood this big old Oak. It was in the farmers way every year and he was tired a farming around it. Gave us the tree for cutting it down. Thats my 660 with 32" bar sitting on the stump.
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+1 ... thats one big mutha of a tree.

 

[Al Smith]

My friend who is a logger gets pissed at me when I tell him that logs are worth more as firewood abd that he should buy a processor.

Scott

As ironic as that statement is,it's true.In this part of the country you literally get more for slicing and dicing good oak than what it will fetch at the mills.It sure is a different story though if you go to buy lumber from them.They just smile and say 3 bucks a board foot.

 

[Ekka]

Would've made a good video that drop, oh well, maybe next time. opcorn:

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Thats arond the same size as the one I took down a couple years ago. Three miles from home, two weekends of VERY hard work it produced 23 face cord. Figure $85 a face cord, not bad money!!

Drop, buck, load, haul, cut, split, stack..

How many man hours per cord? I have a client/friend with a Faver splitter and conveyor/elevator. He can do ~1 cord per hour just in the splitting. That is a 2 man crew so the splitting end is $127.50/mhr, the conveyor piles everything so we can take that variable.

 

[Husky137]

Working for wood....won't do it. Gnarly tree.

 

[PA Plumber]

You need to put a sign on the truck "will work for firewood"

I cannot imagine doing that work without at least a few hundred dollars.

I guess that is perspective.

Looks apealing to me;
You can pull the truck right next to the tree, cut and load without any hassle, don't have to worry about hitting anying on the fall, great firewood, no hills/ditches/other trees/ to work around and it you're cutting firewood anyway, looks like a pretty good deal.

 

[Butch(OH)]

At one time it has been said that a squirrel could have transversed the tree tops from lake Erie to the Ohio river and never touch the ground.Over the years as the land was cleared these big old oaks were left in the fields as a place to rest the horses in the shade.Actually the farmer didn't mind getting out of the hot sun for a while himself.

Over the last century many have been taken down but many are still standing as lone senturies to a bygone era.It does look odd though one lone tree in the middle of an 80 acre field.Some of those fat old oaks are in the neighborhood of 250 to 300 years old.

It's not a big deal to slice and dice one,the stump is another matter.That old veteran has bucked the wind for hundreds of years and really laid down roots that go half way to China.Either a big track excavator or dynamite because they will stall a D8 Cat dead in it's tracks.It will rot in time,maybe another hundred years.

I have also heard that those big Oaks we see in the middle of fields were anchor trees for the pullers that removed the stumps.

 

[newguy18]

I took down a big oak about that size that had been dead for about 5 years.I had to climb it and remove whatwas left of the canopy so it wouldn't take out a fence and some power and I have yet to go back and take down another tree for the same fellow.Oddly enough my mom's the one whos getting paid.The deal for the one thati already took down was shoes for her horse with bad hooves and this next gets the same horses hooves taken care of for a year.I don't even like horses go figure.Oh btw i did with my famous 51 with 20" bar.

 

[Al Smith]

I have also heard that those big Oaks we see in the middle of fields were anchor trees for the pullers that removed the stumps.

They might have been.Those old pioneers were pretty resourcefull.

Chances are that one of those burr or red oaks would not be a good lumber log because they really just grew gnarley from lack of competition for sunlight.I imagine most are like the one pictured and just best suited for firewood.
You might be surprised what lays buried around those old field shade trees.Old horse shoes,nails,an axe or two ,old shotguns,parts of horse harness.

 

[olyman]

Oh ,an old comical story about an oak stump.Maybe twenty years ago these two boozos decided to pop a large oak stump using dynamite.Well these two wizards bored the holes,placed about 3 or 4 sticks of 20 percent nitro ,lit the fuse and took cover.Never budged it,back to the drawing board .

One Einstien type got the brilliant idea to mix some ammonium nitrate fertilizer and diesel fuel together.So Tweedle Dee and Dum stirred up two hundred pounds of the stuff,umm dandy.They drilled many more holes,poured in several wheel barrows of the powder,plus two sticks of twenty percent,lite the fuse,ran for the hills.

A huge explosion,dust,fire,broke windows,mercy me the world is comming to an end.It lauched that stump like a rocket heading for the moon.On it's fall from the ionosphere it got slightly off course.Down through the top of a huge old dairy barn,through the hay mow and directly on top of a new at the time John Deere 4020.Would you believe it broke the tractor in half.

That stump removal could only be termed as a partial success,all things considered.

al--some peoples light bulbs are barely on dim---muwahahahaha---who paid for the tractor repair???? you said it right---bozo's

 

[sawinredneck]

Drop, buck, load, haul, cut, split, stack..

How many man hours per cord? I have a client/friend with a Faver splitter and conveyor/elevator. He can do ~1 cord per hour just in the splitting. That is a 2 man crew so the splitting end is $127.50/mhr, the conveyor piles everything so we can take that variable.

It was three six hour days, and on three hour day with five of us. Two saws going all the time, two on the splitter and one feeding them.
Everything was split onsite and stacked on the tailer, then hauled to the woodlot and stacked in rows there.
The tree was just to the side of a wheat field, pulled everything right up next to it.

 

[Al Smith]

al--some peoples light bulbs are barely on dim---muwahahahaha---who paid for the tractor repair???? you said it right---bozo's

Those two are still talked about around Spencerville Ohio,as well as several other miscalculations of epic proportion.